


Meeting Harry

by DullYellowEye



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Crossover, F/M, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2012-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-28 18:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DullYellowEye/pseuds/DullYellowEye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim's horny, Spock's irritated, Nyota's on edge, Scotty fancies another sandwich, Leonard's amused and Harry's loving every minute of it. Pastry-induced madness. This is more a collection of oneshots in a non-linear order than anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jim

Jim had never really paid much attention to food before. Pike had once told him that his mother was a stunningly good cook, but since she’d never been around he’d never had a chance to test out this theory. Frank had, mostly, been too drunk to do anything other than open beer cans and packets of peanuts. And even then it always seemed like more ended up in his clothing or on the floor than in his mouth. Sam had tried, during his bouts of “let’s pretend it’s just the two of us,” but he’d just been a kid with only a vague idea of what he was supposed to do.

Then there had been Tarsus, where there hadn’t been any food to pay attention to. But Jim tried not to think too hard about that.

After that, food was inconsequential. Jim forgot, a lot of the time, and had only started having regular meals again when Bones had become his friend and, later, best friend. He could never tell when he was hungry anymore, was the main problem. He was very good at telling when was too much though. Jim was well aware that, without Bones’ strict diet and his sharp eye for Jim’s calorific intake versus athletic activity he’d probably look like a walking skeleton.

Which was why it came as a great shock when, just over a year into their first five year mission, Jim found himself lounging on the Captain’s chair with nothing to do while they carted a diplomat from one planet to another, suddenly craving a cinnamon whirl.

The first thought that had sprung into his head was “oh my god, I’m pregnant and having cravings” before this was immediately banished by pure disgust at himself. Jim blamed the late night vid-call from Sam moaning about Aurelan’s pregnancy and the irrational demands being put upon his person. Male pregnancy research had been banned in the early 22nd century after a massive underground network had been discovered involving hundreds of unwilling ‘volunteers’. Not to mention that Jim, much as he’d like to say he had a fulfilling sex life, was going through a dry spell.

After spending some moment musing on the curious routes his thoughts chose to take, he was reminded by his stomach of what had originally started him on the path to begin with. Cinnamon Whirls. With light, buttery pastry curling in on itself and hugging sweet cinnamon and plump raisins tightly in it’s bid to reach the centre. Over it all a thin honey glaze and a light dusting of icing sugar. Jim’s stomach gave a loud rumble, surprising him from his pastry-induced haze.

That hadn’t happened for… well, quite some time. Certainly never so loudly, Jim was sure. Glancing around at the bridge crew he saw that what had startled him quite badly had gone unnoticed by most of them. Only Spock was showing any signs of having observed anything, and probably then only because he’d seen Jim jump and straighten from his normally slouched position.

“Are you feeling well, Captain?” Spock asked, standing smoothly from his chair and hands sliding around his body to clasp behind his back in his customary position.

Jim stared at him considering for a long moment, then back at the main viewer screen where exactly nothing was happening. “How long until preparations need to be made for Ambassador Prote’s departure?”

“Approximately 2.8 hours,” came Spock’s immediate reply.

Nodding to himself, Jim briefly weighed his options. “Then I think I better pay Bones a visit.” He thought about this statement for a little longer, sighed at the thought of the oncoming storm of probing fingers and questions before standing and reluctantly making his way to the turbo lift.

“Captain?”

“You have the con, Mr Spock,” Jim ordered, refusing to acknowledge the hint of concern in Spock’s voice. _Definitely_ not worth thinking about.

From the moment Spock had stepped forward and gone with Jim aboard the Romulan vessel to save Earth Jim had realised that he had an inconvenient and more than a little inappropriate crush on the Vulcan. A year later and what should have been a fanciful notion squished by the well-known fact that said Vulcan was straight as a laser beam was now full blown unrequited love. Thus the dry spell. Still, the advantage of being Kirk, James T. was that outrageous flirting was all part of the package. And, since they’d all accepted him as Captain, the package was what they had to put up with.

Jim was sure that eventually the problem would go away. If not, well, he’d learnt to live with it, had he not?

When he got to down to the Medical bay, Jim’s normal flamboyant entrance went entirely unnoticed as Bones was busy attending to someone. Bones had his back to the door and that someone was far too interested in Bones to pay any attention whatsoever to anything else. Jim almost felt sorry for that decidedly male someone, but he was too busy being interested in his own straight man to feel too bad.

“Bones!” Jim shouted once he got close enough to yell it right in the other man’s ear, then slapped him on the back. “I need to talk to you.”

“What’re you doing down here?” The doctor replied, scaring Jim a little when he didn’t grumble, even a little bit, about the yelling. “Aren’t you mid-shift?”

Jim shrugged, then eyed the young man sat on the biobed. He thought that he was pretty familiar with all of the faces aboard his starship by now, but he didn’t recognise him. “Hmm,” he murmured, then grinned at Bones. “Yes, I am, but I need to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Yep,” Jim’s grin widened before he grabbed his best friend’s wrist and dragging him into his office, waving a cheerful goodbye to the unknown officer.

“Jim! I wasn’t done! Harry burnt his wrist pretty badly, I need to check the skin’s healing over properly,” Bones protested, not putting up much of a fight.

“Please, Bones, the kid probably did it on purpose as an excuse to come up here and oogle your ass.” Jim let Bones splutter over that for a moment, before continuing. “I,” he began grandly, “had a craving.”

The ever-present scowl on the Doctor’s face deepened. “You’re always having cravings, Jim, please don’t tell me you’ve dragged me away from a patient to ask me if I know any girls who might be up for a threesome on the bridge with you.”

Jim got lost in that imagery for a little while, replacing ‘girls’ with ‘Spock’ and ‘threesome’ with ‘hot man sex’. Not that Bones’ original idea didn’t have merit too, of course. Then he shook himself and went back to retelling his experience. “No, Bones. An honest-to-God, I-fancy-a-pastry, did-my-stomach-just-rumble? craving. For food. A cinnamon whirl, to be precise.”

Bones stared at him for a good minute or so, as Jim shifted uncomfortably beneath his gaze. Then he let out a loud bark of laughter. “Damn, Harry’s good.”

And, with that enigmatic statement, Bones led Jim back out of his office to properly introduce him to the young man he’d seen before.


	2. Leonard

Doctor McCoy had seen many strange things in his time first as a general practitioner in Georgia, then as a student at StarFleet, and currently as CMO on Jim's _Enterprise_ , but he had to confess that the feathers that looked to be naturally occurring, all down this patient's right arm, was a new one by him.

"Bloody bastards thought it would be amusing," the man muttered to himself as he sat passively before Leonard's scans.

"Thought what would be amusing, Mr Potter?" Leonard asked. "If you have anything that could enlighten me as to why you have feathers growing from your skin when your DNA registers entirely human I would love to hear it." There was the small fact of having entirely human DNA and coming from a planet that until today - according to records - had gone unexplored by humans as well, but space travel hadn't exactly been well monitored in the aftermath of WWIII, so Leonard thought it best to just tackle one problem at a time.

The man - a Mr Harry Potter - huffed, slumping a bit. "It was a prank. A reminder. Well, the feathers were. I could put up with the feathers. It's the whole knocking me out and taking me to a muggle hospital that I could have done without."

Leonard's eyebrows disappeared in his hairline. "This is a starship, not a hospital, Mr Potter, and if 'Muggle' is some kind of derogatory term to the 'Fleet, I'll quite happily kick your sorry ass right back where I found it."

Harry scowled furiously, then laughed. "Really?" he asked. "But, I thought you people had it all worked out? That's why we left in the first place."

None of this was making any sense to Leonard and he was beginning to wonder if perhaps there wasn't some kind of hallucinogenic in the man's system. His scans hadn't picked up on anything, but Sulu had reported a strange energy field around the planet they were currently orbiting and warned that it might have some unknown effect.

"You don't know anything about Magic and Wizards and the Eugenic Wars that ensued when you became aware of our existence?" Harry asked incredulously at Leonard's continued silence.

"Well of course I know about the Eugenic Wars!" the doctor burst out, outraged that someone might assume him so ill-educated as to forget such a major part of Earth history. "That had nothing to do with - with _magic_ ," he felt ridiculous just saying it.

"Nothing to do with - oh Merlin," Harry groaned and dropped his head to his hands, letting out a muffled squeak when his newly acquired feathers poked him in the eye. Then he looked up again. "The Eugenic Wars had _everything_ to do with magic. Why the hell do you think they started in the first place? Bloody Voldemort." The last was said more of a curse to himself than a comment to the Doctor, but Leonard picked up on it anyway.

"I've heard that name… Voldemort… wasn't he one of the leading researchers pioneering for human perfection?"

Harry snorted and shook his. "'Researcher'," he scoffed. "Oh if Hermione were alive today, how she'd scold you all. Megalomaniac running around killing people by the hundreds and he's remembered as a 'pioneering researcher'."

Bones scowled right back. "How am I supposed to know any better? Most of the records of that time were destroyed during World War III! On that note, how do _you_ know so much?"

Harry blinked hard, taken completely by surprise. "World War III? But we'd left before that, I'm sure of it…" his voice trailed off. "Oh. The Zimbabweans. Stubborn nation. Must have made it back, then." He stopped talking to himself and met Leonard's hard, disbelieving gaze.

"Muggles are non-magic people," he explained. "It's not a derogatory term, anymore than calling a cat 'cat' is. The people down on the planet I imagine you're still circling are, originally, from Earth. We left at the end of the Eugenic Wars so that any future wars of similar nature might be avoided. Or at least brought down upon only our people and not yours as well. We tried to bring everyone, but some must have slipped through our nets. They were difficult times and we needed to leave as swiftly as possible. Voldemort's rapid rise in power produced a massive increase in prejudice in both magic and muggle people - we had to leave before prejudice became fights and fights became war."

He let out a low sigh and closed his eyes briefly. Then, opening them again, he whispered urgently, "You can't tell the rest of your crew this. If the human race has forgotten about magic again, all the better. But you must warn them not to send anything electric to the planet. It might take a little while due to the advancements you've no doubt made, but eventually your systems will get fried."

Leonard startled at that, he knew that an away team, including the Captain and Commander Spock, had already beamed down to the surface. The transporter beam was in no way electrical itself, but all of the systems that monitored the activity of the away team, as well as the communicators, were. Not willing to risk the lives of some ten crew members - including that of his best friend - Leonard leapt for his own communicator.

"Doctor McCoy to the Transporter Room, beam the away team up immediately!" he barked.

"We can no longer get an accurate fix on the away team, Doctor," Scotty's broad accent filtered back through the system. "There's some kind of interference. I might be able to force a better fix if you reckon they're in immediate danger. If not, I'd prefer to wait it out.

Leonard turned to look at his patient, and was surprised when the dark haired man only rolled his eyes. "Figures," he muttered to himself. Then to Leonard, "the interference won't get better, it'll only get worse the more you probe at our magic. They're strong wards, hundreds of years old now, and they've only got stronger with each generation."

"Are the crew members in danger down there?" Leonard asked urgently.

"In danger? Well, I'm guessing they're in uniform, so they'll stick out like a handful of sore thumbs, but as to whether their lives in danger is entirely dependent on what quadrant they land in," Harry said slowly, not wanting to alarm him. "None of the houses will attack with intent to kill, but if they make it obvious that they don't have any magic and are human they will be faced with a lot of angry descendents."

Leonard tried to process this, but his mind was still stuck on the 'magic' part of the whole equation.

Harry huffed again and tried to explain it better. "The peoples of the planet below are split into four basic houses, each house known for varying personal qualities - bravery, intelligence etcetera - and each house is a quadrant. The rivalries between houses goes back thousands of years, but that was overshadowed by the rivalry those people feel towards non-magic folk. When our existence was revealed to the human race as a whole they tried to use our most formidable attribute to breed a race of super humans. They slaughtered if we resisted. So we ran. And we hated. Our people are mostly united now, the old prejudices shoved aside by the need to survive. If the descendents of the families that lost loved ones find out that the descendents of the people who they believe to have slaughtered them are on the planet…" Harry trailed off.

"Shit," Leonard barked out. Shoving aside all of the improbabilities of magic actually existing, the man's story did sort of make sense. "Jim's not big on subtlety. Knowing him he introduced himself with a big 'Hey, we're from Earth, wanna be friends?' speech."

Harry grimaced. "Well then you better hope they didn't land in Slytherin or Gryffindor. No one knows grudges like they do."

"How do we get the crew members back on board the _Enterprise_?" Leonard asked. "If Scotty doesn't have a fix on them now and you reckon that signals only going to get weaker, there's no way of getting them back."

"We?" Harry shot back, laughing briefly. "No, my good doctor, I'm afraid you and your crew are going to have to sit back and let the old fashioned hero do the rescuing this time. Can you get me coordinates of where they were last?"

Leonard nodded and returned his attention to the com. "Scotty. How's that signal doing?"

"Just a blip now, lad. We're going to have to wait this one out, danger or no danger. Disintegration happened too swiftly for me to try and boost it," Scotty's voice filtered back through, only a minor hint of alarm in his tone.

"What are their coordinates?"

"I'll send them up to you now." There was a quite beep followed by a hum as the Doctor received the data and showed it to Harry.

"Slap bang in the middle of Gryffindor. Figures they'd land among the hotheads," Harry commented before standing up. He shook the arm that was covered in feathers vigorously for a brief moment and ignored the doctor's indignant protest when they all came off, flying chaotically around the biobed and making a mess. "I'll be seeing you later," Harry told him warmly, then winked and, without so much as a puff of smoke, disappeared.


	3. Spock

After one year, three weeks, two days and sixteen hours - not including the whole Nerada incident - serving under the somewhat infamous James T. Kirk, Spock was well used to the Captain ignoring correct procedure and taking point on any and all landing parties. But this time he felt he really ought to have insisted otherwise. In spite of Scotty's continued efforts to beam them down to a quiet, discrete location, they had once again landed in the most conspicuous of places. On this particular occasion, in what looked to be a town square.

Now, the beaming down itself did not appear to be a problem. There was nary a bat of an eyelid when ten strange men appeared out of nowhere. Granted, on planets where transporters were an everyday occurrence, it no longer startled civilians like it once had, but even then there would be odd looks. This was to be a First Contact mission, however, and the statistical likelihood of a method of transport similar to a Transporter beam being invented entirely independently was approximately 6.5 percent. If he included the fact that the planet they had landed on seemed to rely primarily on torches and candles for lighting that percentile further decreased by a factor of ten.

But it was not their sudden appearance that was causing heads to turn. No, it was only several moments later when people started doing double takes and staring at them curiously. It was unnerving initially to have so many people staring at his lower half, so much so that it took him longer than usual to ascertain that their interest was not in his legs so much as it was his trousers. All of the beings on this planet, bar only the younger children, were wearing gown-like robes of varying styles and colours, so the landing party stood out.

The conflict between their apparent intelligence and the lack of any kind of technology - electrical or otherwise - was a fascination that Spock longed to investigate. But politics always came first in First Contact missions, so his questions would have to wait. Taking in as much of his surroundings as he was capable without breaking the ever-stoic mask he wore, Spock stepped sideways a little, to the right and a little behind his Captain, who had stepped forward to greet the natives.

"Hello," Captain Kirk said, pausing to see if a leader would step forward from the planet's residents.

The crowd that had gathered, shifted as one, heads turning and ducking and whispers flying fast and low. They appeared to be waiting for someone, but when a middle aged man did finally move to the front there was another shift of dissatisfaction. Spock concluded that this man was deemed suitable, but was not the representative they had originally wanted. Which led to the assumption that their first choice was unavailable. Hundreds of possible explanations rushed to the forefront of his mind, but Spock dismissed most of them and chose to ignore the others without further information.

"Welcome," the middle aged man said. His voice was deep and mellow, the accent refined in a strange way that Spock could not quite place. "I am Frederick Potter. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

Kirk grinned and took a step closer, offering his right hand to the other man in traditional Earth greeting. "British?" he asked. "Early colonists?"

The man - Potter - shook the hand firmly, but let go as quickly as politeness would allow. "Yes," he said pointedly. "And yourself?"

"I'm Captain James T Kirk of the Starship _Enterprise_ , this is my First Officer Spock, and these are-"

"Your men," Potter interrupted. "Yes, I can work that one out. Why are you here? What do you want?"

Sensing more than a little hostility from the stranger, Spock took a half step towards Kirk. If anything happened to the Captain, it didn't bear thinking about.

Kirk shifted, having already detected the less than friendliness of the other man. "We are representatives of StarFleet, a deep-space exploratory, peacekeeping and military service maintained by the United Federation of Planets."

A young woman stepped forward from the crowd, coming to stand behind Potter as Spock had Kirk. "We want nothing to do with you, or your Federation of Planets," she said calmly and plainly. "Now please leave."

Kirk gaped. They had been trained for open arms, for bargaining and for hostility. But never had he expected to encounter a situation where they were calmly refused without an explanation. "Surely if I could explain to your what our main prerogatives are-"

He was cut short again, but this time by a flash of red light than someone talking. Spock barely had time to react before the Captain crumpled to the floor. Immediately going for the wrist to check for Kirk's pulse, Spock was pleased to note that the men and women who made up the rest of their landing party had moved rapidly to surround them in a tight circle, phasers all trained outwards.

"He's only stunned," the young woman said. "He should wake up in a couple of hours."

Spock, having determined the Captain's condition was stable, stood now to take lead and continue negotiations with the natives. "Why did you deem it necessary to disable our Captain?" he asked, tone harder than normal.

"You're _muggles_ ," Potter spat, clear disgust at the last word.

"That is not a term that I am familiar with. I am not as well versed in human history as I would like, please explain."

"Muggles are filthy, lying hypocrites! They feared us, so they took from us and tried to break us. Human or not, you're one of _them_ and I will not have your presence polluting our planet!"

"Frederick!" barked a new voice from Spock's left, and he noticed with curiosity that at the sound of that voice the crowd shifted again. Tense shoulders became more relaxed, clenched fists were uncurled and the anger of many - though not all - turned into shame.

What Spock expected to see when he turned to face the newcomer, he did not quite know. What he saw, however, was not it. He was himself ashamed to admit - if only to himself - that he was indeed shocked by the other man's appearance. It was a young man who appeared to be only about twenty in age with scruffy black hair, lopsided glasses and bright green eyes. The strange thing was - if the people's utter respect of this youth was not enough - this man was wearing trousers. Jeans, in fact, of late 20th century design.

The young man was looking solely at Potter, paying no attention to Spock and the rest of the landing party. "That is quite enough!" Potter ducked his head and took a step back so he was still at the front of the crowd, but no longer standing apart from it. "Thanks to your boys I've already been up to their vessel," a pair of childish giggles sounded from somewhere in the crowd and the young man's expression softened. "I'll be taking these men and women back to their ship in just a minute and I have had reassurances that neither they, nor the Federation that they represent will return. If we could, until then, try and uphold the statute of secrecy? I know it's an ancient law and hardly worth having anymore, but we _do_ still have it. For a reason." There was the heavy weight of history in those last words and the grown ups in the crowd - particularly Potter, looked thoroughly chastised.

"Sir?" One of the ensigns spoke up, nearly tapping Spock on the arm, but catching herself in time. "The communicators have stopped working and the phasers are rapidly losing functionality."

The newcomer nodded his head at those words, although Spock would not have previously assumed he was close enough to hear them. "That's the energies of this place messing with them. Why else do you think the only street lamps are old fashioned gas ones? Right, are you boys and girls ready to go home? I'm afraid I can only take three of you at a time. Who's first?"

"On whose authority have you gained reassurance of our not returning?" Spock had to ask. If the stranger was tricking them -

"Uh… McCoy? Dr Leonard McCoy? And he spoke to Scotty, too. The energies of this planet - the energy that keeps us thriving here - sort of kills electrical appliances. The scanners back on your ship were already losing your signal to the extent that Scotty could no longer - er - beam you up? So the reassurance is less from him than it is from your totally reliance on electricity. You can't communicate safely with our planet without our help and, well, you've seen how they are."

"Indeed," Spock replied, one eyebrow inching up his forehead. There was more to this story than the young man before him was explaining, but he doubted that the ensigns would pick up on it and as the 'statute of secrecy' appeared to hold great weight over the locals, he thought it best to keep his questioning to a later date. "If you could take the Captain first? I shall remain here until your last trip. Ensigns Harper and Lorsen, if you would step forward?"

The young man caught Spock's eyes for a long moment and gazed at him shrewdly. When a foreign mind brushed at the very edges of his own, the First Officer startled far more than he had earlier, and visibly reacted. It was only the slight widening of the eyes, but the stranger noticed and immediately withdrew. "Sorry," he muttered. "I wasn't trying to breach your privacy, just check general intentions."

Spocked bowed his head briefly. "Apology accepted. Please refrain from doing something similar in the future without warning. My species are touch-telepaths and I was not prepared for mental probing."

"I wasn't going to probe you," the other man huffed a little. "Seriously. I wasn't going to do anymore than I did - just enough to know I can trust you." He stopped, stared at Spock contemplatively before adding, "Eye contact."

Then he reached out to grab the still prone Captain and the two ensigns before disappearing again. He was back only seconds later, reaching for the next three, then gone, then back again. When he popped out a third time Spock realised this was why the natives had not been surprised by their impromptu arrival. If they could all come and go as this young man was doing, then it was no wonder that their interest had been in their clothing rather than their method of transport. Spock couldn't work out how the transition from one space to the next could take place without any apparent devices wielding any apparent energy, but - ah. Energy. If the energy on this planet was so prolific as to have impeded the effectiveness of their phasers and communications systems within minutes of their arrival, there was no telling what else it could do.

The stranger reappeared for the fourth time and this time Spock noticed that the young man had gone almost imperceptibly paler. Certainly human eyes wouldn't have picked up on it without close inspection. The answer to the second part of the problem sparked through his mind. The people themselves were the devices. It was they who wielded the energy and directed it to do their bidding; from street lamps to teleportation, stunning someone to reading their mind.

"We call it magic," the young man said simply, shrugging his shoulders. "We call ourselves wizards and witches. We are fundamentally human, just as the majority of your crew are, but we were born with an inexplicable energy - our birthright. We stayed secret and hidden from Muggle view - that is, non-magic folk - but eventually the secret spilled. And we ran. We made this planet our home and now it is infused with that energy. Energy that, unfortunately, wipes out anything with an electrical current."

"Do the human cardiovascular and nervous systems not also run on electricity?" Spock asked.

The young man chuckled, although what he found funny Spock could not tell. "Magic is not malicious, Officer. It is the power of Eden, Mother Nature, the Gods - whatever you want to call it. It can be cruel and it can be kind, but it would not kill without reason."

One of Spock's eyebrows rose again as he considered this. It made sense. If told magic were real in any other context he might not have believed it, but on this planet where the most advanced thing he had seen was a gas street lamp, but they were capable of disappearing one place and reappearing in another instantaneously - well, if he were not a logical being it might incite the 'anything might happen' attitude his mother had sometimes delighted in professing to.

The young man reached out his hand, but did not touch. "May I?"

"Is physical contact necessary?"

He nodded and Spock offered his arm for the young man to grip tightly.

"Oh, and Officer?" he asked Spock, the same shit-eating grin that Jim often wore suddenly appearing on his face. "I'm not quite as young as you're thinking." Then the planet disappeared and Spock felt a curious sensation that one might feel if it were possible to be sucked through a straw.


	4. Scotty

He wasn't sure whether anyone else had noticed, since he was the only one who had such a dedication to them, but Scotty had noticed recently that the standards of the sandwiches had shot up. Which was odd, because he hadn't changed the replicators' programming since that incident with the live fish. Which he still insisted had nothing to do with that tiny miscalculation he'd made.

The other food, too, had become less… cardboard-y. But he wasn't sure why. He appreciated it, most definitely, because there was nothing quite like trying to fix the automatic atmosphere settings on an empty stomach. Except, perhaps, the same situation after various ensigns had been meddling with said system. Which they did. Frequently. Which had led to a very displeased Science and First Officer actually coming down to the engine rooms to give him an honest to god Vulcan scolding. Scotty hadn't even realised Vulcans _could_ scold. He thought they got stuck at the I-am-superior-and-disapprove-of-you setting.

But he digressed. The point was that the food was better and he wanted to know why.

At first Scotty thought that the system itself might be at fault - if 'fault' was the right word. He wasn't sure what, precisely, but something had changed. The main circuit board wasn't working in the way the programming indicated it should. The information that was entered by a user was all directed to one computer on the storage levels which then forwarded different parts of that message to the relevant areas, before all the information came back through the sister computer and the rest of the system until it arrived, as a plate of sarnies, at the relevant replicator. Most of the time.

From what he could tell, however, once the information got to that first computer it stopped dead. Which was odd, because if that happened the message shouldn't be received by the storage capsules, so the food wouldn't be made, so the replicator wouldn't be able to actually replicate food. It would just blip annoyingly and use up that particular person's credits.

But it didn't. The food arrived, as it should, and stunning quality too. Although, how stunning it really was Scotty couldn't really tell, having not eaten a genuinely brilliant sandwich since the beginning of the mission. Which was far, _far_ too long ago.

So he decided that a little manual exploration was necessary. Newest brilliant sandwich in one hand, a particularly faithful screwdriver in the other (and a pair of scissors and a welding torch in his pockets just in case) he began the journey to the storage decks and the room that housed the two computers that synched the whole system in the hope that there, at least, he might find some answers.

Whatever he expected to find it was not Doctor McCoy. It certainly wasn't Dr McCoy with floury handprints on his bum, significantly redder lips than usual and a guilty but pleased smile turning up the corners of his mouth. Which turned immediately into a death-threatening scowl when Scotty coughed to announce his presence.

"Not. A. Word," the good doctor growled out, brushing past the engineer and making a rapid retreat to the medical bay. Not quite fast enough for Scotty to miss the blush.

"Ye might wanae brush the seat o' your trousers off, laddie!" Scotty called after him, chuckling heartily at the stumble in the other man's stride and McCoy's hands trying desperately to pat away all signs of flour.

Huh. Flour. Scotty couldn't remember programming that into the replicators. There was, once in a while, a crew member who wanted to do a bit of hands-on cooking, but if so they had to go another two levels down from this - almost back to engineering - to get any of the base ingredients. Determind to solve this mystery once and for all, he slammed open the door and hoped to high heavens that no one was naked.

The individual he met wasn't nude, which was a relief. He did have very floury hands though, which was perplexing. Then Scotty took enough time to take in the rest of the room and blanched at what this stranger had done to a perfectly safe, sanitary engineering room.

"Issa kitchen!" he blurted out, half yelling.

The stranger grinned widely at him, keeping half an eye on him and the rest on the dough he was pounding with his hands. "Yep," he said cheerfully.

"But - but…" Scotty trailed off. It was sacrilege.

"Mr Scott, I assume? Head of Engineering?" the dark haired cook asked.

"Aye," the Scotsman replied warily, snapping his jaw shut and trying to ignore the tic in his eye.

"Harry Potter. I'm the new chef."

Scotty flinched. "Chef? We don' have a chef! She dinnae _need_ a chef!"

Harry stared at him blankly, hands never stopping moving, in spite of his lack of concentration on them. "She? Oh! You mean the ship. Well, no, I suppose the ship _herself_ doesn't need a chef, but the people living on her do."

"Dinnae mock me, lad," Scotty warned, waggling his favourite screwdriver at him. "And dinnae tell me what this fair lassie needs or don't."

The 'chef' huffed and stopped kneading the dough, wiping his hands off on a towel - a courtesy he had 'forgotten' with McCoy, Scotty absently noticed - then he turned to the panels of dials and knobs and buttons that made up the second of the two computers.

"No!" Scotty gasped out, before a sandwich appeared in the tester replicator in the room. He stared at it suspiciously with narrowed eyes.

"Well go on then," Harry insisted. "Try it. Compare that replicated sandwich to the one in your hand - one that I made earlier, by hand, I'll have you know."

Scotty turned his narrow eyed gaze on the young man. "Not wit' hands tha' had nae been washed I hope," he said, trying not to think about where on the CMO's person those hands might have been.

"Pfft," Harry replied succinctly, waving a negligent hand. "I'm a chef, not an idiot. Eat!"

Not removing suspicious eyes from the chef, Scotty took a bite out of the sandwich he still clutched in one hand. It had become a bit squished by his grip, but the lettuce was fresh, the bacon crispy and the tomato spurted yellow seeds down his chin the way tomatoes _should_ do. It was a truly beautiful sandwich. Then Scotty lifted the replicated sandwich and ate a mouthful of that. Cardboard-y was an understatement. It was limp and tasteless and not worthy of the name sandwich.

Harry continued to smile winningly.

Scotty continued to scowl darkly.

Then he took another bite of Harry's sandwich. And another. And dammit, he didn't _care_ if the hands that had made it had come straight from groping McCoy (well, alright, he did, but not as much as he'd originally thought) because it was a bloody good sandwich.

Finally he conceded grumpily, "aye, laddie, I suppose you'll do."


	5. Nyota

It had been a long shift. A very long shift. Technically it was the same length of shift as it normally was. The problem was that, normally, there was at least one other person on the bridge that wasn't insane.

Not that Spock or Pavel or Hikaru or Jim were insane. Except… they were. She was surrounded by imbeciles. Male imbeciles completely blind to the affection they held for each other. Normally Pavel and Hikaru were alright. It had been a rocky start, their relationship, what with Pavel's youth, but as soon as the young man had turned eighteen everything had sorted itself out and smoothed in a gentle partnership. Nyota wasn't close enough to either of them to know any details, but she had eyes. She knew the courtesy they showed one another, the way they worked together with complete trust.

Today - well, today Hikaru was shut off. He had sat rigidly in his chair the entire shift. And not the rigid of a sore backside that Nyota had come to recognise from him or Pavel. This was entirely different. He had been giving Pavel the 'silent treatment' for a solid eight hours and the poor boy had got more and more frantic as the shift went on, apparently completely unaware of what he'd done wrong.

Still, she supposed their drama, at least, would sort itself out sooner rather than later. The same could not be said for the other two males on the bridge command crew. It was painfully obvious that their Captain was head-over-heels, totally irreversibly in love with his First Officer. If you couldn't tell just from the way he acted around Spock - standing or sitting straighter, always leaning closer than he did with anyone else and the long, lingering stares - then the fact that Jim hadn't got laid in the last three months was a pretty clear indicator.

Nyota had a certain fondness for her Captain. He was a play boy and proud of it, of course. But he was also a family man. As soon as she had seen him during their first, unofficial mission, to save Earth she had seen it. If that weren't clear enough, his reaction to when Leonard's ex-wife tried to get a restraining order against him from seeing his daughter spelled it out loud and clear. Jim had received the notice through official channels whilst on the bridge, and regulations be damned, he had vid-called Jocelyn right then and there and told her what-for. Leonard had been furious of course, until he'd found out that his best friend had just won him an extra three 'visiting' hours each week. It didn't sound like much, but Nyota knew how much Leonard adored his daughter and that Jim would risk his career for him… well, it said a lot.

Which was why, when she had seen him gradually falling in love with Spock and the number of people he slept with rapidly decreasing, she had stepped back with grace. She still loved Spock, of course, but he knew, just as she did, that their love for one another was much better platonic than sexual. She had been his rock when he needed it most, and he would be forever grateful for that. But knowing the Captain and his happy-go-lucky attitude and the way he, without realising it in himself, was committing to Spock, well her love for him was nothing compared to that.

Spock adored the Captain too, of course. Nyota wasn't sure whether it was love or not, it was difficult enough being able to discern Spock's regard for Jim without trying to work out whether it was as a friend or something more. What she did know was that he tried to impress the Captain, just as Jim tried to impress him. She was quite certain he stated regulations so religiously only to prove to Jim that he knew it. She was also well aware that their little chess matches were the highlights of both of their weeks.

It was kind of sweet. All this love. But it was sickening, too. Not least because Nyota was well aware that the Enterprise had one of the handsomest bridge crews in the 'Fleet, and yet she wasn't involved with any of them. She was still single and they were all gay. Or rather, not so much 'gay' as just off the market. But not in any way that was making any of them happy at the moment. It was unfair and irritating. She wished very much that she could just smash their heads together and tell them to go get happy.

Perhaps she ought to see if the Enterprise had cleaning closets or some such that she could trick them into going into and just lock them in for a couple of hours. She was pretty certain the beta shift bridge crew wouldn't mind a few extra hours if it meant Jim and Spock got together. In fact, they'd probably be a little too happy if they knew that plan and might try to film the encounter. Huh. Perhaps another plan might be more successful.

Needless to say, Nyota was all too relieved when her shift ended and she raced down to the engineering levels to see if Scotty was open to a little bit of flirting. Her original impression of Scotty had been that he was a foul-mouthed, uncouth Scot. And, while that opinion was now more firmly set than before, she'd also come to know him well enough to see all of his more endearing qualities too. Nyota had come to appreciate those qualities quite a bit recently as the 'mooning' of Jim and Spock had got worse and worse.

"Sorry, lassie," he said when she asked. Should have figured really. "I dinnae hae time at talk at the mo'. I spen' all af'ernoon on a wild goose chase. I hae a few mo'e systems tha' need boosting."

Nyota pouted, leaning her hip against the station Scotty was working on, trying to get his full attention. "Please, Montgomery?" she pleaded, hoping the use of his first name might work.

"Nyota!" he warned. "Stop it. I hae to get these sorted."

Knowing that she'd disappointed him in some way, she straightened and sighed, genuinely disappointed. "Sorry, Scotty," she apologised softly, starting to leave.

"Nyota," he called before she'd left and she turned to smile half heartedly at him. "Dinner tonight?" He paused, frowned to himself, then clarified, "With me?"

Nyota's insincere smile bloomed into a full, authenticly happy one. "I'd like that," she told him.

"20.00 hours then," he said, turning back to his equipment. "I'll pick ye up from yer room."

As she walked away Nyota sincerely hoped that the smile she was wearing didn't look as gooey as it felt. Humming happily to herself, mood significantly improved, she decided that she'd walk back to her room. There was no rush and maybe she'd run into someone she could have a nice chat with. As luck would have it, whilst climbing the stairs to Deck 4 the most delicious waft of smell met her nose and her hum turned into a quiet moan of appreciation.

Giving up the rest of the trip to her rooms as a lost cause, she followed her nose to find the source of the smell.

"Shit, shit, shit!" a voice cussed loudly and a loud clang followed by hissing sounded out.

"Are you alright?" Nyota asked, pushing the door open.

She was greeted with the source of the smell and a short dark-haired young man clutching his wrist.

"No. Shit. I think I burnt it," the stranger said. "Sorry, I don't normally swear this much, but Merlin this hurts!"

Ignoring the declaration of 'Merlin' - there were all sorts aboard starships - Nyota grasped at his arm saying, "here, let me." She straightened the curled fingers of his fist and brushed her thumb over the burnt skin, causing the young man to wince. "You better take this up to Leonard," she said. "You burnt it quite badly. Just try and make sure it doesn't touch anything - burns get infected easily."

The stranger grunted in acknowledgement, shrugging his shoulders. His face brightened perceptibly at the mention of Leonard and she rolled her eyes - they were all lovestruck fools on this ship, it seemed. Not that she could begrudge the snarly doctor a little happiness. He deserved it, from what little Nyota had seen and heard of his ex-wife.

"What were you doing, if you don't mind my asking?" she asked, taking in all the cooking equipment.

"Cooking," he replied simply, then beamed. "Your replicated food really is quite awful and Mr Spock said that it was 'acceptable' if I were to make use of my time in this manner. 'Course, that was after I told him that I'd be interested in trying out different alien culture's traditional foods and would he be so kind as to lend me a Vulcan recipe book?"

Nyota chuckled and, after making sure there was nothing that couldn't be left for a couple of hours, started to lead him towards the turbo lift. "Sounds like Spock. I'm Nyota Uhura, by the way, Communications Officer."

"Harry Potter, Chef," he returned, green eyes glinting mischievously. "I think I've met all the other Officers now, although I don't know if the Captain counts, since he was unconscious at the time."

She considered asking for the specifics but, to be honest, Jim ended up unconscious at some point during most of the missions they went on, so it didn't really matter. "That sounds like him, too," she replied.

"Poor Miss Nyota, surrounded by male colleagues. However do you survive?" he teased.

"Thank you!" she cried out, ignoring his laugh. "Blind idiots, the lot of them. Oh, they're all geniuses when it comes to navigating or stategy, but when it comes to each other? Pah!" She threw her hands in the air grandly, enjoying the chance to be melodramatic.

Harry sighed heavily in an equally over-done way. "I'm afraid, my dear, that it does not get any better. Boys will be boys. Just as girls will be girls," he added with a wink.

The turbo lift stopped and he stepped out, bowing lowly to her.

"Thank you my fair heroine," he said.

Nyota couldn't help but giggle at his show. "Fare thee well, handsome sir," she shot back with a cheeky curtsey as the doors shut between them, cutting off his laugh.

Mad. Complete madness. She giggled again lightly. Just what she'd needed, a little bit of lighthearted fun. Nyota thought about that a moment, then realised that she hadn't actually discovered the cause of the wonderful smell. She smiled secretly to herself, heading back to her quarters. Well, she'd have to resolve that. Maybe this Harry would be just the relief she needed from the testosterone-, possessiveness-fueled atmosphere she suddenly found herself thrust into.

Enough of thoughts like that, though. She had a date with Scotty to look forward to. Yes, the day was certainly starting to look up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And of course the burnt wrist in this one is the burnt wrist in Jim's chapter. I have started writing a vaguely normal sequel to this which explores Harry's history a bit more as well as looking closer at the relationships on board. I actually have a beta for it (which I didn't for this one) so there should be fewer mistakes. Please leave a comment or some kudos, won't you?
> 
> Much love,  
> Yellow  
> xx

**Author's Note:**

> Each 'chapter' to be done from a different point of view. To be followed by a multi-chapter fic that will be in chronological order. Comments and kudos, as I'm sure you can appreciate, are adored and flames will be laughed at accordingly. I hope you enjoy :)
> 
> Much love,  
> Yellow  
> xx


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